How to Set up “Out of office or vacation reply” for Gmail and Google Workspace

Posted on by Summa Lai

If you’ll be away from your Gmail account, like on a vacation or without access to the Internet, you can set up a vacation responder to automatically notify people that you won’t be able to get back to them right away. When people send you a message, they’ll receive an email response containing what you’ve written in your vacation auto reply.Want to get more out of Google apps at work or school?Sign up for a free Google Workspace trial.ComputerAndroidiPhone & iPad

Turn your vacation reply on or off

Set up your vacation reply

  1. On your computer, open Gmail.
  2. In the top right, click Settings Settings and then See all settings.
  3. Scroll down to the “Vacation responder” section.
  4. Select Vacation responder on.
  5. Fill in the date range, subject, and message.
  6. Under your message, check the box if you only want your contacts to see your vacation reply.
  7. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.

Note: If you have a Gmail signature, it will be shown at the bottom of your vacation response.

Turn off your vacation reply

When your vacation reply is on, you’ll see a banner across the top of your inbox that shows the subject of your vacation response.

To turn off your vacation response, click End now.

When your vacation reply is sent

Your vacation reply starts at 12:00 AM on the start date and ends at 11:59 PM on the end date, unless you end it earlier.

In most cases, your vacation response is only sent to people the first time they message you.

Here are the times someone may see your vacation response more than once:

  • If the same person contacts you again after four days and your vacation reply is still on, they’ll see your vacation response again.
  • Your vacation response starts over each time you edit it. If someone gets your initial vacation response, then emails you again after you’ve edited your response, they’ll see your new response.
  • If you use Gmail through your work, school, or other organization, you can choose whether your response is sent to everyone or only people in your organization.

Tip: Messages sent to your spam folder and messages addressed to a mailing list you subscribe to won’t get your vacation response.

Find out-of-office status

You can find the out-of-office statuses in Gmail.

If someone is away from the office, Gmail shows their out of office status when you compose an email to them. You can still send the email, but they might not reply until they return. If you have Chat enabled in Gmail, you’ll also get their out of office status when you send a direct message.

If someone doesn’t have permission to view your out of office event, Gmail won’t show you’re out of office.

Ref: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/25922?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop